Don’t Take The Pith. Drayton Arms Theatre.

Husband and wife writer Peter Rae and director Helen Bang garnered solid reviews and a Best Comedy London Pub Theatre Awards nomination for their broad comedy An Absolute Farce of a Murder Mystery last year. In full on if-it-ain’t-broke-don’t-fix-it mode the couple have essentially reworked exactly the same format – Agatha Christie parody with token narrative, witty wordplay, knockabout, and a plethora of double-entendres – in this year’s Don’t Take The Pith. The result is 80 minutes of funny if undemanding froth, interspersed with an awful lot of “pith” jokes. Think a marginally more upmarket reworking of 1960s movie classic Carry on Up the Khyber.

Set in the year “Nineteen Hundred and Somerset Maugham” events unfold in the far-flung colonial outpost of “Not-Borneo”, which consists of “swamp, mountains and singing natives”.  British Governor Lord Peter de Meur (Richard Rycroft channelling a nonchalantly xenophobic Winston Churchill) and wife Lady Fleur de Meur (Laura Morgan) are having a spot of trouble with the locals. Tribal head Adiratna (Billie Vee) and First Minister (Ola Teniola in glorious anti-woke native mode) are up in arms. The tribal talisman, held in trust by the dopey colonial duo, has gone missing. There will be hell to pay if it cannot be found. Also missing is the couple’s enormous diamond pendant and a red ruby plundered from somewhere in India.

On the case are amateur sleuths Lord Sebastian Hardcastle (Peter Rae who is also currently to be seen in at the Stage Door Theatre’s The Tailor-Made Man) and his psychic companion Lady Susan Bloom (Helen Bang). Add into the mix unintelligible Northern maid Maud (Abigail Dawn) “servants rarely have a narrative purpose” we hear, and the sexually incontinent local quack Dr Frenchman (David Furlong) whose role we are told is “to do all the complicated exposition”.

The story, such as it is, takes a distant second place to the humour: “there isn’t a plot dear, it’s a comedy” Fleur de Meur advises us. Anticipate digs at or riffs on, in no particular order, Sherlock Holmes, Nicolas Parsons, detective fiction tropes, casual colonial racism, class distinctions, and the impenetrability of Northern accents. And yes, those “pith” jokes, notionally connected to the headgear worn by British colonial military personnel serving in warmer climates. “I’m going to whip out my helmet and have a pith” is one of the more respectable examples but there are many, many more. You will be up to your eyes in “pith”.

Writer:  Peter Rae

Director:  Helen Bang